14 DAY TRIAL // September was a good month for the videogames industry, as shown by the figures put out by the NPD Group for both hardware and software, with the decline of the previous months reversed and with revenue pretty much equal to that registered in the same month of 2008. But it seems that October might bring more pain to videogaming with the final two months of the year offering a rather limited rebound.
Michael Pachter, the analyst who looks at the videogaming market for Wedbush Morgan, is saying that he expects the overall industry to go down by 5% year over year. He initially announced that the industry would see an increase during the year.
He has told those interested in investing in videogame-related companies that “The biggest contributor to our lower forecast is a downward revision to our Wii hardware and software sales expectations. While it is likely that Wii sales will rebound as a result of the recent price reduction, we think it is prudent to forecast conservatively.”
The main reason cited for the change in outlook has been the so-called “console fatigue,” meaning that the price cuts the Nintendo Wii, the PlayStation 3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft received have not attracted as many buyers as initially thought.
Pachter sees game releases like Modern Warfare 2, Assassin's Creed 2 and Super Mario Bros. Wii to herald the beginning of a recovery for the industry, which will last until 2010, with important titles such as Starcraft II and God of War III sustaining the upward trend early next year and through summer. The analyst believes that “no fewer than 16 games released in the first half of 2010 to sell more than 1 million units apiece, with five of these selling more than 3 million units.”